With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city
Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the
streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and
under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were
decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry
women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster,
a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a
dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows’ crossing flights over
the music and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city, where
on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with
mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercised their restive horses before the race.
The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with streamers
of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another;
they were vastly excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as
his own. Far off to the north and west the moountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay.
The air of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with
white-gold fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. There was just
enough wind to make the banners that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In
the silence of the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding through the city
streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air that from
time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the
bells.
Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas